German Self ID law

[Winter2028]

'The main thrust of the new self-ID law that comes into effect on 1 November is the expurgation of all socio-psychological assessments necessary for a change of sex in law. In future anyone will be able to change their official sex at their local registry office by means of a simple speech act. The new law allows parents to determine the sex of their children at birth themselves. From the age of 14, teenagers will also be able to change their legal sex. Parental objections can be overridden by the family court, which experience shows, tend to affirm self-declared gender identities. Courts are already withdrawing parental rights and taking young people into care where conflicts arise. Misgendering will be made an offence subject to a penalty of 10,000 euros.'

Perhaps I am slow to this but isn't this insane?! 14?!

And this from the country which banned double barrelled surnames for babies (only legal from May this year and it hasn't even been passed yet). I am pregnant (live in uk )and wish to give my baby (German and uk dual citizen) a double barrelled surname plus a transliterated Chinese middle name in addition to the Hebrew first name (very common boys name in uk) and a German name (after my husband's great grandpa). I would have to make a name declaration just to do this even though all the names are fairly common names (just some are foreign). My MIL had to make name declarations when registering her kids for German passports too as they all had hebrew names.

I dont understand why it can be easier for someone to change their gender compared to a parent giving a baby a non German name!

Yes, it is mad. Here is one of the inevitable consequences. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14294183/German-right-wing-extremist-gender-female-prison.html

OT right from the start: My German sister in the UK gave her daughter a fairly common German first name, a Yoruba first name, and a double barrelled surname (made from her's and her boyfriend's). If I remember correctly, she only needed to state for the German authorities that she would follow British naming rules for the baby (www.duesseldorf.de/standesamt/geburt-im-ausland/namenserklaerungen#c143266). The Standesamt 1 Berlin (who registers all Germans born abroad) then registered the baby under the name accepted by the British registrar. As the parents weren't married, a double barrelled name wouldn't have been possible under German regulations. The German passport was then made in that name.
Maybe try to contact Standesamt 1 for advice?

Namenserklaerungen are required in certain circumstances, it's nothing to do with the name itself. I needed one for both my children because they have a different last name to me and were born in the UK. My niece in Germany needed one for her sons because she and her husband both kept their names when they got married but her name is the family name, so the boys have her (and my) last name and she needed to declare that.

This German law is totally bonkers, yes, and very un-German because of all the entirely foreseeable administrative problems it creates. I cannot understand why it has not yet been challenged in the constitutional court. I hope that the party mainly responsible for it, the Greens, will pay for this at the ballot box.

"The new law allows parents to determine the sex of their children at birth themselves."

So it's not just ("just", huh) self-ID? Parents who've longed for a boy can declare that their baby girl is really a boy, have I got that right?

Yes, so the parents can decide what sex they want their baby recorded as ? WTF?

There were already discussions on this on the forum here; for anyone interested in the earlier debates, some threads here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5168731-protest-germanys-introduction-of-self-id

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5048705-selfid-law-passed-in-german-parliament?reply=134497541

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5066750-germany-passes-self-id-law-allowing-infants-to-transition

It hasn't been challenged because none of the opposition parties have showed any interest in filing a challenge in principle ("Normenkontrollklage"), while no concrete court case has so far arisen that could potentially work its way up to the Constitutional Court.

Why have the opposition parties not taken this to the constitutional court? The AfD, for example?

The AfD is - rightly - under investigation for being anti-constitutional (due to anti-democracy) and several relevant courts and institutions already confirmed this.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/afd-verfassungsschutz-verdachtsfall-gerichtsurteil-100.html (sorry, I don't know a page in English off the bat).

It would be a bit ridiculous for them to appeal to the constitutional court.
Another reason is, I suspect, women's rights are not their biggest topic.
As posted by @Lovelyview, this is probably their method of trolling the system.
Maybe they knew already the person mentioned in the article would be sentenced a few months ago and waited for the right moment to use this.

Another possibility is that they don't want to use up their resources for this - finances and experts.

It’s depressing that there is not a single party in Germany willing to take this on. At least the Tories were willing to spend political capital on opposing self-ID in Scotland.

Yes, from the other parties who voted against it there would be the Conservatives (CDU + CSU) and BSW - Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (former Left party member who formed her own party).
I'm very disappointed in the conservatives. The BSW probably doesn't have the financial resources to take this on yet, either.

The other factor is that you need experts to testify for your case, and while there are some GC doctors, psychologists and other relevant people in Germany, most of them probably don't want to be experts for the AfD for fear of their reputation long-term. The experts might want to stay out of party politics altogether, as it's very volatile.

However, I am pretty sure that the AfD is not a saviour of women and if they are for women, as in the cases of the attacks on women during new years night in Cologne a few years ago, they use it mostly as anti-immigrant argument - "let go of our women" type of arguments.

I suspect, too, that they don't want to do all the procedural slog, they like the swift gestures.
When they had some procedural roles in the newly elected Thuringian parliament a few months ago, they didn't care for parliamentarian law and only created chaos and wanting to dominate the debate.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/thueringen-eklat-landtag-100.html

They are chaos agents, just like Trump. You get some positive stuff and the next day they freeze funding for school meals and Medicaid.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv48540n4po

People have to be on their toes all the time and the AfD is no saviour.

I don't think the self-ID law is on many German's radar for the upcoming election. The main issue will be immigration.

It's not that simple. AfD doesn't have standing to refer a law to the Constitutional Court for examination. Has to be the federal government (ha ha), a state government or a group of MPs comprising at least 25 percent of the Bundestag. Most state governments are out because they're in either red-black or black-green coalitions. So this would have left Bavaria but they chickened out - and their premier Söder's recent video full of "wrong body" shite may partially explain why.

Thank you all for the additional info and perspectives. It’s obviously complicated but infuriating nonetheless! I guess the only way forward will be high-profile cases in the media that show how dangerous self-ID really is. So Marla-Svenja might be a good start …

There was another relevant Act made law in the last few days, the Violence Assistance Act (Gewalthilfegesetz).

"Despite all the relief, the SPD and the Greens had to swallow a few bitter pills for this negotiating success . The biggest of these is that the right to protection will no longer apply to all victims of gender-based violence, as originally intended. Trans, inter and non-binary people will not be protected by this law. That is bitter, because they are particularly often affected by violence." https://taz-de.translate.goog/Gewalthilfegesetz-im-Bundestag/!6062298/?xtrsl=mt&xtrtl=de&xtrhl=de&xtrpto=wapp

The original text included "sex-based and gender-based violence", thus encompassing gender groups that are not biologically female. Who should be the focus of support as well in case of violence, but critics noted that this law was meant to improve the conditions for women and womens refuges. Only at a second glance you notice the use of "persons" instead of "women" etc. So clearly there was some muddying the focus going on.

... and in the second taz article:
https://taz.de/Gewalthilfegesetz-wird-kommen/!6062269&s=gewalthilfegesetz/

"Der Deutsche Frauenrat begrüßte die Einigung als historischen Moment und erklärte: „Das Gesetz wird Leben retten!“ Sprecherin Sylvia Haller kritisierte aber, dass am Ende noch transfeindliche Narrative das Gesetz prägten."

"The German Women's Council welcomed the agreement as a historic moment and declared: "The law will save lives." Spokeswoman Sylvia Haller, however, criticized the fact that transphobic narratives ultimately shaped the law."

Somewhere else in the first article you posted they write about how the exlusion of trans people from women's shelters accelerates "transphobic narratives" - meaning the exclusion from this law accelerates transphobia.
In the above quote the spokeswoman said the narratives were the active influence. So apparently it's both ways.

I can't even deal with the fact that this is what they should loudest about, instead of the chronic underfinancing of shelters - often enough they can't accept more women as they are at capacity.
I also am not sure how this aligns with self-ID; apparently this is one of the "accepted" areas where women can be amongst themselves.

But women make up a much higher percentage of the population than trans people; of course they need these places. Instead there should be separate provision for tm and tw. As far as I know, there are a few (but rare) shelters for male victims, too.

I can't remember ever seen such loud debates about exclusion of a specific group about any other topic: poor people, people with working class background, second or third generation refugees, girls and women, people with disabilities - they all are or were sometimes excluded from specific roles or topics or physical places or areas of society, and there were steps and debates to improve these situations, but none of these debates were ever that loud and to the forefront and had so many "allies".
All of them also have a much higher percentage within the population.

@ConstructionTime and of course the irony is that many shelters won't permit older male children to stay at the refuge with their mothers!